Lech Walesa: "I never collaborated"

Former Polish President Lech Walesa's new autobiography, "The Road to Truth: An Autobiography" was released in Polish bookstores last Fridays. The book contains Walesa's fervent denials that he ever served as a communist agent in the 1970s.

"I did not think long. I did not even read them," Walesa writes in his biography, adding that "It was a mistake that I signed anything then. Let me repeat once again, that I never signed any declaration of collaboration or any promise to be an agent."

In both cases, supporters of the two men have raised questions as to why, if these accusations are true, the Czech and Polish governments would have made no use of this information in the years of Kundera's and Walesa's dissidence, when discrediting them would have been greatly in the interest of their governments.

No easy answers are expected in either case.

English-language audiences will have to hold their judgment of Walesa's own account of his life for the time being. No information is yet available on an English translation of "The Road to Truth."